Politics

I wrote earlier that the immigration debate can bite back — and it’s already done just that. Speaking this morning, Vince Cable has labeled the Prime Minister’s speech as “very unwise,” and at risk of “inflaming extremism.” That, lest it need saying, is the same Vince Cable who’s a member of Cameron’s government. In theoretical terms, what this clarifies is the parameters of the Coalition Agreement. While almost every policy that Cameron highlights in his speech is part of that document, it seems that the Lib Dems don’t have to agree with the way he sells them. The point is being made, this morning, that the idea of reducing net

David Cameron’s Oxford gaffe is refusing to die down. Whenever I’ve called Tory MPs or other members of the Conservative family in the last few days, it has been the first subject they have wanted to raise. People are genuinely perplexed — and worried — as to why Cameron said what he said. As Pete pointed out earlier, Bruce Anderson — the commentator who is David Cameron’s longest standing media supporter — warns that the Prime Minister is fuelling fears of government encouraged discrimination against the middle classes. Another long standing Cameroon loyalist said to me earlier, that he now worried that Cameron just felt too guilty about his own

The Vickers Review into the future of banking appears to have prevented a possible coalition row. The Tories and the Liberal Democrats have had different views on what to do about the banks, with the Lib Dems keener to break up the banks come what may and the Tories more worried about preserving the competitiveness of the City.   At the very start of the coalition there was a rather unseemly turf war between Cable and Osborne about who controlled policy on the banks, and many have expected a row to break out when he review reported. But, as we predicted on Coffee House back in February, the review has

Andrew Tyrie promised that the Treasury Select Committee would be an assertive, insistent body under his stewardship — and he hasn’t disappointed so far. The committee’s recent evidence sessions have been fiery affairs, particularly by the usual standards of these things. And today they have released the result: an extensive and prescriptive report into last month’s Budget. Several of the report’s observations are worth noting down — not least that advance briefing of the Budget is “corrosive of good government,” and that “almost all the evidence received [about the government’s Enterprise Zones] is unsure about the extent to which they will contribute to UK growth.” But more significant is the

13 years ago, The Spectator carried an interview with Nigel Lawson in which he gave his views on the EU’s Economic and Monetary Union – views that seem especially prophetic today. ‘It’s going to be very nasty’, Christopher Fildes, The Spectator 2 May 1998 The Nigel Lawson Diet now seems to suit its inventor. Gone are the days when I had to defend him as chancellor against his girthist critics. Then he fell out with Margaret Thatcher – at first, over Europe. He wanted to put the pound into the exchange rate mechanism: she would not hear of it. Now I catch up with him at the House of Lords,